An investigation on tourism industry, its marketing strategies and techniques to attract tourists in UK post Brexit.
The decision of Brexit has introduced a major change in the relation which UK has with European Union. The EU laws have continued to be applicable, but the country UK would not have a representation in the representative body of UK. The most significant change that have been introduced is that the freedom of movement which used to be present before Brexit between United Kingdom and all other EU states would not be applicable anymore as a result of which one industry that is going to be highly affected is the travel and tourism industry. This is the reason due to which UK travel and tourism operator needs to come up with innovate ways to market their products so as to prevent their market from being negatively impacted due to Brexit after effect of weaker demand from Europe. Therefore, this research is going to investigate the literature and the statics of the impact that has been left to the tourism industry of UK after Brexit has taken place and the consequent marketing strategies and techniques applied by the tourism industry operators of UK so as to as to prevent their industry to face the after effects of Brexit.
1.1 Significance of the research
This is very significant considering the future of tourism industry of UK. The economy of UK has experienced a lot of change after the economic phenomenon of Brexit too place. The UK tourism industry suffered significant change and drop in tourist count as a consequence of the restricting that has been out in the free movement of the citizens of European Union in between EU and UK after Brexit.
1.2 Research Aim and Objectives
The aim of this research is to investigate the tourism industry of UK and also identify the marketing strategies that are needed to be implemented for the purpose of attracting tourists in the country of UK after Brexit.
The objectives that are needed to be fulfilled via the assistance of this research are the following:
- To investigate the conditions of the tourism industry of UK prior to Brexit and after Brexit.
- To identify the changes in the conditions of the tourism industry of UK after Brexit.
- To challenges being faced in the tourism industry of UK after Brexit.
- To formulate the marketing strategies and techniques those are going to work for attracting more tourist to UK after Brexit.
The research questions that are going to be answered via the assistance of the research are the following:
- What was the condition of the tourism industry of UK prior to Brexit and after Brexit?
- What are different changes that took place in the conditions of the tourism industry of UK after Brexit?
- What are the challenges being faced in the tourism industry of UK after Brexit?
- How the marketing strategies and techniques can be designed so that more tourists can be attracted to UK after Brexit?
2.0 Research Background and Literature Review
The Tourism industry of UK is one of the largest and most successful industries and has the position of the fifth largest one considering the expenditure that is made by the international visitors and it is the eight largest one considering the count of visitors visiting the country. Moreover, the country also acquires the fifth position with respect to the international competitiveness (Ardley, 2018). The different sectors that are making up the tourism industry of UK are responsible for the generation of 130 billion pound of revenue approximately and 25 billion pounds via the means of export earnings and is also responsible for the employment of 3.1 billion people.
The tourism industry of UK have been the most successful industry of UK in an uninterrupted manner prior to Brexit and it had the most promising set of policies that was making its growth a continuous phenomenon. However, post Brexit the country came out of the European Union. On the other hand Amoamo (2018) has pointed out different ways in which the UK bound travellers have been impacted post Brexit.
Exchange Rate: One of these parameters is the exchange rate as the British pound fell sharply sue to the reason of the lack of the considered upon UK regarding its economical performance post Brexit.Security lines in airports: The second parameter is the security lines where the influx of tourists as the fast track lanes in the airports would only be provided to the British passport users, the EU nationals are discouraged as after Brexit they would be required to avail the same queue as non-UK citizens.
Airfare: Furthermore the airlines fares have also inclined for specially the EU citizens. Prior to Brexit the EU airlines had the no-frills airlines options where huge discounts were being provided, but after Brexit the absence of this option would make the airfares go higher, which would lead to the EU travellers being discouraged.
Brexit is going to bring about a change in the market of travel and tourism due to the reason of multiple of factors. One of the primary reasons due to which the impact is going to be created is the currency fluctuation.
Considering the condition of the domestic and the outbound tourism, one of the most prominent reason due to which the impact has been created is the currency fluctuation. Due to the reason of the factor of currency fluctuation, the tourists of UK have the higher chances of looking forward to more cost effective travel options. On the other hand the international inbound tourist’s chances of considering UK as a tourism destination has increased because of the factor of fall of the value of pound against American dollar by 11 percent. On the other hand, prior to Brexit, UK was mostly being obtaining a high number of tourists from the European nations. However, the rates of tourists visiting the country from the European nations have experienced a slight fall. These changes that have taken place in the tourism industry have completely modified the traditional tourism market of UK. In some cases the change is creating new opportunities due to the fall in the value of pound against dollar. However, the tourism market of UK has completely transformed as previously the country used to get the highest percentage of tourists from the neighbouring nations who are already acquainted with UK (Sarpong, 2018). However, Brexit has completely transformed the UK’s tourism market as the necessity has been created for appealing to new audiences who might not be aware of the destinations in UK along its covering before prior to the transformation brought about by Brexit.
2.3 Marketing strategies for the promoting tourism
After Brexit the tourism market of UK is catering to the global market. The smaller tourism operators would be capable of becoming competitive in the market if the utilization of cost effective online marketing would be used that would eliminate the necessity of making huge financial investments or investments regarding human resources (Popescu, 2017). An automated marketing solution is needed to be provided, which would be the one that would not need a significant amount of investment for the purpose of engaging customers by the personalization of the communications to all the potential travellers for the purpose of providing them relevant tourism options according to their interests. The modifications in the marketing techniques that are needed to be brought about are the following:
2.3.1 Getting acquainted with more potential tourists
The most essential knowledge that is needed to be present for the purpose of the formulation of the most effective marketing strategy is the knowledge regarding potential tourists. The potentiality of providing all the tourists information which would have a high level of relevance to their interests is the most effective way of the creation of a competitive marketing strategy instead of boasting the same content of tourism options to all customers. The utilization of a marketing automation platform the task of learning and getting knowledge of the audience and then using this information for the personalization of the communications could be done in an automatic manner (Yoshida, Yagi and Garrod, 2019). This signifies that the daily workload of the tourism marketing manager would be decreased but on the other hand the personalization would be enhanced.
2.3.2 Facilitation of a two-way channel
It was pointed out by McLeay, Lichy and Asaad (2018) that the marketing strategy that is needed to be designed for the purpose of the customisation of the marketing strategy and targeting the customers in a better manner is the automation of the communications for providing a customizable as well as individual experience to the customers. For instance, when the tourists would have the eagerness of visiting the location but would not have any clue regarding the hours in which visiting the location would be perfect, can sent a text to the tourism operators of UK for obtaining automated responses containing information about the best hours for visiting the place. This marketing technique of automated two way communication is one of the most effective ways of boosting the engagement and providing around the clock services for the visitors.
2.3.3 Presence in all channels
After the phenomenon of Brexit when the new and modified tourism options would be searched for by the new set of tourists having a different overview, it is significant that a separate solutions for the individual channels are needed to be provided by the utilization of multiple of communication platforms and methods so that the marketing and communication strategies can be kept centralized as well as organised (Sima, 2017).
The social media would be allowing the destinations for making a contact with the visitors in a relatively low cost and there would be a higher degree of efficiency that could be achieved via the means of communication tools. If the destinations of UK have the necessity of enforcing on a highly competitive market, there is the necessity of distinguishing the tourism products of UK in a more competitive manner in comparison to the competitors. However, it has been argued by Hudson and Hudson (2017) that the space of the social media is very overcrowded in nature, it becomes extremely difficult for attracting the attention of the global tourists. However, there are some schemes which have the probability of working better in comparison to the other strategies. Some of these schemes has been pointed out by Gowreesunkar, Séraphin and Morrison (2018) by stating that the different factors such as novelty, uniqueness, involvement of the celebrities, chances to win, competitive offers, unexpectedness and a very attractive graphical design has the power of attracting new tourists to visit the country of UK and provide those tourist the knowledge about the potential tourism destinations which have not been explored by them before.
2.4 Economy employment contribution
In spite of the uncertainty of the market that has been brought forward by Brexit, the business organisations of UK have increased their rate of hiring of the workers. It has been found that the British Chamber of Commerce has found out that sixty percent of the firms of UK are looking forward to the recruitment of new staff in the year 2019’s second quarter and fifty percent of the recruitment has been done in the first quarter. Hence, the job market of UK has been resilient in spite of the uncertainty that has been introduced by Brexit in addition to the slow economic condition of UK (Elliott, 2019).It has also been observed that almost 79 percent of the hotels and the catering services are making an effort of hiring people having a strong demand of seasonal workers. However, a higher fraction than three quarter of the jobs that were being created are part-time.
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the strategies and methods that will help to collect, analyze and presentation of data in order to reach towards the right research outcome. The reason behind to undertakes this chapter is to gain the knowledge about the method and research strategy which will use to perform the research work. So this chapter will guide the researcher what approach and method need to incorporate for implementing the research study in best possible manner (Palinkas et al., 2015). However, the research methodology would provide the valuable platform for fulfilling the research objectives and aim. In respect to achieve this, these areas would undertake including research philosophy, approach, design, data collection and sampling method etc. Thus, these areas support the researcher to perform the study in most reliable manner.
There are different research approaches that can be taken for the purpose of performing a research. The different approaches are the inductive research approach and the deductive research approach. The approach that would be followed for the inductive research approach would be starting with an observation and it would be ending with the development of a set of theories (Kumar, 2019). On the other hand the approach that would be taken in the deductive way would be starting the research on the basis of a set of propositions and the end result that would be obtained is the conformation or the rejection of the propositions or hypothesis.
The approach of research that would be followed for the present research would be the inductive research approach as the research would be beginning with framing the questions of the research and then empirical data would be collected so that it can be used for the generation of the most effective strategies and techniques related to marketing that can be used (Silverman, 2016). Here specific observations related to the condition of the tourism industry of UK after Brexit would be made and on this basis broader generalizations would be made.
The different research philosophies that can be applied for the purpose of conducting the research are the positivism, realism, pragmatism or the interpretivism method. In the positivism philosophy a highly structured methodology is used. Collection of data is to be done from a large sample and the primary method of data collection becomes quantitative. However, the qualitative method can also be used. In the realism method the selection of the qualitative or the quantitative method is done as per the suitability with the subject matter of the research (Kumar, 2019). On the other hand when work is needed to be done on a small sample in an investigative manner the selection of the interpretivism philosophy is made which collected data with the help of the qualitative method. When the need of following both the quantitative and the qualitative method is required the pragmatism philosophy is needed to be selected.
Hence, the philosophy that is going to be most suitable for the present research is the interpretivism philosophy as the selection of a small sample population is needed to be done who would be having a deep knowledge about the present condition of the tourism market of UK after Brexit.
The different research strategies that can be used for conducting the research are the exploratory, descriptive or the explanatory research strategy. However, the descriptive research strategy will undertake in order to measuring one or more variables and their cause and effect. Likewise, this strategy could help to measure the impact of Brexit over the tourism sector in UK (Rahi, 2017). In respect to this, two variables are investigated based on defining the cause of occurring variable one means Brexit and its affect on other variables i.e. UK tourism sector. This way, the strategy provides the detail information about the variables and their interrelations to each other.
The reason behind to select this strategy is that descriptive strategy will help to offer relevant facts related to impact of Brexit over UK tourism sector or strategies that firms uses to appeal large customer base after Brexit (Lopez et al., 2019). Thus, this helps to develop the best understanding about the research topic and based on this, it will become easy to identify the valid research result. The descriptive strategy would bring various benefits to researcher in the form gain authentic information with the help of conduct survey. This strategy involves the quantitative sources to supports researcher for collecting facts towards conduct the research study.
Data is needed to be collected for the purpose of performing the research and the collection of this data can be done via both primary and the secondary method. The primary method would be collecting the data directly from the research participants by directly interacting with them. There are two different methods of primary data collection which are the quantitative and the qualitative methods. In the qualitative method a general statistical idea is generated by collecting data from a large sample and in the qualitative method direct interaction is made with a few individuals who would be having a deep knowledge on the topic of the research. On the other hand another approach of data collection that can be used is the secondary data collection method where data is to be collected from research papers related to the present research where data from human participants has already been collected and analysed (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015). These data are re- analysed considering the particular case of the present research.
The data collection method that would be most suitable for the current research is the qualitative data collection method and the secondary data collection method. In the qualitative data collection method interview would be conducted with the sample population and in the secondary research two research papers would be reviewed and analysed.
A sample population is needed to be selected out of the research population of people who are having an in-depth knowledge about travel and tourism. The technique that is needed to be applied for the selection of the sample from the research population is the random sampling method. The sample population for the qualitative research would be four managers working in four different travel and tourism management companies.
There are some ethical parameters that are neededto be remembered by the researcher at the time of conducting the research. The first ethical concern that is going to be faced in the research is at time of the collection of the data from the research participants. The manager with whom the qualitative research is going to be conducted is needed to be done in an ethical manner (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015). The research participants should not be forced to answer the question of any research and if they choose not to answer questions of the research then they should not be forced. Moreover, if the research participants choose not to deliver their identity then their wish is needed to be respected.
The data analysis approach that would be selected for the qualitative research is the narrative approach which would have the involvement of the reformulation of the facts that has been presented by the research respondents on the context of the research topic. Here the revision of the primary qualitative data is needed to be done by the researcher. The data analysis method that would be followed for the secondary research would be the establishment of the credibility of a particular data. The consideration of facts such as the credibility and the purpose of the data at the time when it has been collected, the sampling strategy, the protocol of data collection and the questions that have been asked for shaping the data would be analysed.
| Activities | Week 1 | week 2 | week 3 | week 4 | week 5 | week 6 | week 7 | week 8 | week 9 | week 10 | week 11 |
| Selecting research topic | ✓ | ||||||||||
| developing Aim and Objectives | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Research Question formation | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Literature Review | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Decision of the research methodology | ✓ | ||||||||||
| the qualitative research is conducted | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Conducting secondary data collection | ✓ | ||||||||||
| the data collected from the primary qualitative method is analysed | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Secondary data analysis | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Discussion as well as recommendation | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Conclusion | ✓ |
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